


Don't Do Me Like That

by Carbocat



Series: The Same Old You [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Based on that part of the season 3 trailer where Billy's in the shower, Character Death, Hurt Steve Harrington, Implied/Referenced Suicide, It's super sad guys, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 04:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18930961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: He clenched his fists around that mantra – I don’t deserve to be here. I should be dead. I wish I was dead – and crushed it between black fingernails and the scars on his hands. He crushed it until it was nothing but small and broken pieces.He destroyed the mantra word by word, feeling by feeling, so that nobody could see it, or read it, or know. He buried it beneath indifference. He buried it beneath hairspray and a smirk, and the false pretense that he was still normal. Unaffected. Untouchable.





	Don't Do Me Like That

He didn’t deserve to be alive.

The morning sun slotted in through the open blinds, and he felt nothing. It curled up on the carpet and crept up the walls like clockwork, and he felt _numb_. Day in and day out, the sunlight spread through the room like it belong there, like the only thing in the world that didn’t belong was _him_.

The warmth and the sun ate up the darkness in the room and it ate up his chest. It was warm like a burn, like a needle through the skin and bones _shifting_ into something new, something horrible.

He repeated the same mantra over and over in his head, repeated it in the bend of his teeth as his mouth clenched shut so tight that it hurt. He felt like screaming, and his mind repeated, _I don’t deserve to be alive. I don’t deserve to be here. I should have died. I wished I would have died._

He shouldn’t be here, and he knew it.

He shouldn’t be here, and it felt wrong.

He shouldn’t be here, nobody wanted him to be here.

It was a tangible agreement.

It was an unspoken consensus between everybody that was there that night, that _knew_. It was unanimous with even the people that didn’t know. It was felt in the air, something the whole goddamn world could agree on.

 _He_ was wrong. _He_ shouldn’t be here.

It was supposed to be _him_.

The distain and the hate, and all the grotesque _wrongness_ of his presence ate up space in the tangible world. It was palpable, and weighty, and it sat on his tongue with the bitter taste of too much sour, but he _was_ here.

He squared his shoulders every morning because there was nowhere else for him to go. He squared his jaw. He bit down on the sour and the bitter, on the chalky taste of self-hatred and pretended that he didn’t give a fuck.

They were stuck with him and he was stuck with them.

They were all going to goddamn deal with it.

He pulled himself out of bed with old aches that no longer faded and new pains that would never go away, and joints that popped and cracked into place, and a quiet house. It was always quiet now.

He clenched his fists around that mantra – _I don’t deserve to be here. I should be dead. I wish I was dead –_ and crushed it between black fingernails and the scars on his hands. He crushed it until it was nothing but small and broken pieces.

He destroyed the mantra word by word, feeling by feeling, so that nobody could see it, or read it, or _know_. He buried it beneath indifference. He buried it beneath hairspray and a smirk, and the false pretense that he was still normal. Unaffected. Untouchable.

He stood on his feet and _pretended_.

The world was wrong, not him in it. He pretended.

He got dressed like he got dressed every day and acted as if there was nothing different about it, that it hadn’t been different since that night.

He buttoned his shirt up to the collar and pulled on a nice jacket, hiding bandages and scars like they were healed and gone, like that night never happened. He found his nice shoes that he wore to church and he put those on.

He fixed his hair in the mirror and stared into eyes that were his.

He looked deep into startling blue and wide pupils, and found no trace of anything yellow, or monstrous, or angry. He used to be so angry all the time and he couldn’t bring himself to find that anger anymore.

He couldn’t find a fire inside of him, couldn’t find kindling to light and keep himself warm, keep himself going because there was _nothing_ there. There wasn’t anything in him that hadn’t been hollowed out and gnawed bloody, raw.

There was nothing but cold indifference inside of him. He shouldn’t be alive, and it felt more and more like he wasn’t.

It was just going through the motions.

He was going through the motions of late July mornings, but now Neil was in the hospital. Neil had gashes scabbed over on his face from a bat made of nails and Susan kept her distance, and the police report was still pending.

She stood on the other side of the kitchen and kept her eyes down, offering a soft good morning because that was what _Neil_ liked and she thought that they were the same. Neil liked women that lowered their eyes and kissed his ass, and greeted him to the new morning with fucking breakfast.

She tried not to flinch when Billy grabbed the plate off the counter and stomped out to the front porch to eat, and she failed. She still thought that he was the one that was wrong, that Neil hadn’t hit him first, hadn’t laughed in his face when Billy warned him that he would use the bat.

He had warned him, and he didn’t listen, and that wasn’t Billy’s fault. It wasn’t his fault that Neil taught him to follow fucking through with his threats.

Billy could hear her before she spoke.

He could hear her slow, nearly silent creep to the door, the pounding of her heart against her ribcage. He could practically smell her sweat, could practically hear her _think_ and the pointless mental debate on if she wanted the safety of the screen door between them.

“Billy.” She didn’t open the door. “I’m going to the hospital today.”

She said, “I’m taking the truck. The keys to my car are on the counter, thank you for driving Max to this.”

She said, “Please, be safe.”

She didn’t say, _don’t hurt my daughter._

She didn’t say, _Neil still can’t speak._

She didn’t say, _I saw the way that your eyes changed._

She didn’t say, _I know what you truly are._

Billy didn’t say anything back.

The bandages on his neck where the needle had pierced the skin itched. His skin itched all over, to the tips of his toes and the dead ends of his hair. He wasn’t at home in his skin anymore, he didn’t _like_ it.

It was too loose on his bones, on his muscles, like a mask with the wrong fit. There was too much room inside of him because there was _nothing_ left inside of him. There was nothing at all.

“We’re going to be late.”

Billy blinked.

Max didn’t look at him anymore and Billy understood why.

After the bat and the Byers’ house, and the night that he almost killed Steve Harrington, she had been defiant. The little girl that was afraid of pissing him off had died and from the ashes, she grew strong and _tall_. Billy had been pissed, but he had been impressed.

She was gone now.

The girl that stood before him on the front porch was tall like corn stalks and Steve Harrington, and just as easy to knock over. She didn’t look him in the eyes with a fiery demand for respect. She didn’t even look at him wearily, like he was a bomb ready to go off.

She didn’t meet his eyes at all anymore, looking over his shoulder or at his earring with a voice that dripped distain, “We need to go, _now.”_

The radio in Susan’s car relayed a traffic report until Max turned it off, pitching them into silence. She pulled at the hem of her black dress absently until it was wrinkled between her fingers, and neither of them said anything until she got the courage to speak, “You don’t have to come.”

What she meant was, _don’t come._

She meant, _I wish you had died._

She meant, _you were a monster even before that rat bit you._

He said, “I’m going.”

“You shouldn’t. You’re just going to upset everybody.”

Mike Wheeler spat on the pavement and pushed him back before he even got all the way out of the car, knocking him back against the side and nearly into the driver’s seat. He had balls to sucker punch someone like that. He had balls that the others didn’t, that Billy didn’t.

He cried openly and loudly, and so, so righteously angry as he swore bloody fucking murder so loud it echoed over the headstones, “You shouldn’t be here! It should have been you!”

He sobbed ugly with curled fists, “You should have died, not him!”

Billy let him hit his chest. He let him get in another hit to his face and barely flinched at all. He let him scream and cry, and sob truths, “No one should have saved you. You deserved what happened to you!”

Billy knew that he did.

He knew that the monster that he had become was just his bones shifting and his skin rotting into the physical manifestation of what he had always been. He had always been _this_. He knew it in California, knew it at the Byers house last year, and he knew it in that crumbling shopping center.

He knew it when Harrington had got all drunk and pretty at some shitty end of the school year party going toe-to-toe, shot-for-shot, and had pressed his thumb lightly against the bruise on Billy’s cheek. He knew it when all he wanted to do was break Harrington’s fingers, knew it listening to his stupid voice vow with drunk certainty, _you’re gonna be the death of me one day, Hargrove. I can feel it in my bones._  

He knew that he was a monster when Harrington had been waiting outside the pool for his shift to end, still dressed in that dumb sailor outfit and offering him melted ice cream. He knew it when all he wanted to do was punch his face in when Harrington scuffed his shoe on the ground and showed him pamphlets about late admissions essays.

He knew it when he wanted to just – hold him. He knew it when he wanted to drag Harrington into the pool and drown him in the water for even suggesting that Billy would help him.

He knew of his cruelty, of his potential for so much worse, and Harrington still got drunk on dime store liquor in the passenger seat of Billy’s Camaro and told him like Billy wasn’t going to make fun of him that he didn’t want to be stuck in Hawkins for the rest of his life.

He had laughed cruel and open when Harrington told him that he had these words inside of him that he couldn’t get on paper, that he wasn’t _dumb_ , just _slow,_ that he thought he might have some kind of learning disability. He had spat back in Harrington’s face, _‘It’s not a disability when you’re really just that stupid, babe.’_

He still took Harrington’s ice cream money and listened to his whispers about how no one could know that he was helping him because his parents would be pissed off that he got a tutor. He took Harrington’s rich boy money and tore up his college essays because it was _funny_ to see how much he could get paid to crush the hope of someone so pretty, to see how Steve would bite his lip when he told him that none of this made them friends, how Steve would spit out, _I know that._  

He deserved to die because he _didn’t_ and someone else did.

He deserved to die because _Steve_ died instead.

He deserved to die because Harrington got on a waiting list to a decent university that he would never get the option to attend. He deserved to die because Harrington was a _babysitter_ , and an idiot, and he fought the world with a bat, but he dropped it for Billy and he doesn’t understand _why_.

He deserved the fists and the words, and the whole goddamn town looking at him like he was the worst thing that ever happened to it because he _was_. He knew what flesh tasted like when your teeth grew too big and too sharp, and all you were was hungry. He was so hungry, and Harrington didn’t run.

Harrington didn’t plant his feet either.

He dropped the fucking bat and struck out with a needle. He left himself open and Billy had _teeth_. It didn’t matter where he was struck or how he was saved because it was _his_ bite and his teeth, and his hunger that left Harrington choking on his own blood.

Harrington had said on one of those nights that they weren’t friends, but neither wanted to go home, _I think I might want to be a cop, like Hopper. I want to help people._

Billy had said back, _that sounds so fucking stupid, pretty boy. You’ll get yourself killed doing something stupid._

 _We’re going to die anyways,_ he remembered Harrington say, knocking back warm beer in the moonlight. He had sounded as sure as the night sky and the rat bite hidden under Billy’s sleeve, _I’d die a hero, man. I know it._

Steve had, but he hadn’t.

Steve didn’t die bloody in the arms of the girl that gave him up. He didn’t even last to the end of the battle. He didn’t finish the fight or stop the war. He didn’t die on the battle field that was Starcourt Mall.

He was taken out in act two.

He didn’t even fucking die in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

It was _infection_ that got him.

He had been saved, but Billy’s teeth had been rat-infested and vicious, and vile. He had lost a lot of blood and was weak, and the virus multiplied and spread at a rate that couldn’t be contained. It _ate_ at his organs and colored beneath his fingernails black. His darks grew hollow beneath them, grew lighter and yellow-tinted, and Harrington swallowed a shotgun.

And it was _his_ fault.

Billy had been the one that dragged his IV stand down the hospital corridors and sat by Harrington’s bedside, and he listened to every horrible thing that had happened in Hawkins. He listened to tales of Barb Holland, of Bob Newby and Hawkins National Lab, and what was really going on that night at the Byers. He had crossed his arms and glared at doctors who told him to rest, and he stated, “I’m not apologizing for you being a fucking idiot, Harrington.”

“If you apologize than I’m really going to think that I’m dying,” Harrington had joked. He had said serious, “There’s nothing to be sorry for, man.”

Billy was in the hospital for two weeks under observation. He was poked at and prodded and it was determined that the cure had worked. He was sent home and had returned the next day and sat at Harrington’s bedside while the scientists did test and took blood, and Steve coughed up black slime in a tray.

“Hey,” He would wheeze, “When are you getting out of here?”

“Hell if I know, pretty boy.”

Billy sat in Harrington’s hideous plaid bedroom after the scientists assured that he wasn’t turning into a mutant demo-whatever and agreed that he should be comfortable. He sat in the chair from the desk and no one ever said that they were sending Steve home to die but they all knew it.

He sat there and listened to Steve talk about Dustin and the kids. He listened to him tell him what each of them liked and disliked, and their fucking allergies. He listened to him explain that _yeah_ , Mike was a dick most of the time, but he had a big heart.

He sat there while Henderson tried to be strong and bawled his eyes out and Max’s eyes got hard and her words short. He sat there while Will hung up drawings and Lucas brought board games, and everybody smiled like there was nothing wrong.

He was there when Mike broke the mirror on the back of Harrington’s door slamming it shut, when he bitched that it wasn’t fair, and Harrington comforted him.

He stayed in that chair while the girl with the mind powers – _El, or Eleven, or Jane,_ Steve had told him like it would ever matter – sat next to him and held his hand, and said nothing. He sat there while Nancy made promises and Jonathan made vows, and adults tried to make everything seem more hopeful than they were ever going to be, and he never said a goddamn word to anybody.

He sat in that fucking chair and he pressed his black fingernails to Harrington’s black fingernails. He looked into the yellow tint of too-light eyes and said so fucking softly, “I’m sorry, okay. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Harrington had squeezed his hand and smiled like nothing was ever wrong, and he told him that he was _bored_. He offered to teach him to play Smoke on the Water on guitar, “Did you know I knew how to play guitar? Everybody’s always surprised by that.”

Billy dug around in the closet for the guitar case that said in sharpie on the front _S. Harrington – Grade 8, Jazz Band,_ and he practiced the songs because Steve showed him the chords, because the only time he’d seen Steve with a genuine smile was when he mastered Stairway to Heaven. He put his guard down and he was the one that allowed the guilt to eat him enough for Steve Harrington to worm in.

He was the one that let himself be taken in by the tales of monsters and government spies, and let himself be convinced that _yes,_ Harrington still needed to be able to protect himself. He was the one that listened to what Steve needed, the _one_ thing that he needed, and charmed his way into Karen Wheeler’s house.

He let himself believe that Steve really was too weak to swing the bat and that yes, it should become Billy’s bat because someone needed to protect those tiny little brats. He let himself believe that Steve needed something more practical in case monsters crawled through the walls.

He let himself believe that he wasn’t really stealing in the same way that he let himself into Nancy’s room. There was no second thought, there was no doubt. Steve never asked anything of him, but he asked for this.

He had slipped that shotgun of hers – hidden up in her closet just like Steve said it would be – and all its bullets into the guitar case with _S. Harrington – Grade 8, Jazz Band_ written on it.

Steve asked Billy about Heaven once with teeth coated with black phlegm and eyes more gold than brown. He ran his hand through his hair and asked in a voice that had broke if he thought it was really silver clouds and pretty angles, and Billy had left without answering.

Billy shouldn’t be here because he got that gun, because he was supposed to be smart and he never _thought_ -

He was an idiot.

They both were.

“I know.” Billy grabbed Mike’s wrist and held it tight enough to grind the bones when he tried to slam him. He should have died, _I know_.

Harrington should have listened to the kids when they told him to get away from Billy. He should have run with the rest of them when they told him that there was no saving him, that it wasn’t worth it.

Max had said that he was a lost cause and Harrington should have fucking listened. Billy should have _never_ listened, and he should have never gotten that gun.

He couldn’t say any of that to Mike because it didn’t _matter_ , because Harrington was fucking _dead_ and Billy was the only person to blame. He couldn’t tell them that Steve didn’t seem suicidal, that it was about protection and he didn’t _think_.

He could only watch as the kids all started yelling at once and Mike ripped his arm away. He could only watch as the one with the hat, the one that Steve adored more than anybody else – _Dustin_ – cried that Steve wouldn’t want this, “Please. Mike, just stop, okay? Please.”

He watched Claudia Henderson try to comfort her son and watched him run away. He watched Karen Wheeler look at him like she didn’t know that she was a pawn in the road to this funeral as she led Mike away with hands on his shoulders. He watched them all disappear with eyes that wouldn’t look at him until Nancy approached.

“You should go,” She said, voice low and icy, freezing. Her eyes were a solid icy blue, calloused over with too much death for kids their age because they _were_ just kids, all of them.

She was a forever-winter, an Indiana-type of purgatory that Billy would never be able to escape. Her words struck like frostbite to his open wounds, burning cold, “This was never supposed to happen like this.”

“I know.”

“I don’t blame you for biting him,” She told him.

She didn’t.

She said that in the hospital when she had come to visit Steve and she found him at his bedside. She told him that he wasn’t in control of himself and couldn’t be blamed for the action taken as a bloodthirsty monster. She blamed him for the gun, for dragging her into Steve’s blood.

“I know.”

Nancy wore guilt at her wrists, weighting on down like bracelets made of lead. She wore her guilt all encompassing, doing everything in her power not to be buried beneath its avalanche. She looked like all her sleeping moments were a repeated mantra of every horrible thing she’d ever said to Steve.

It was her shotgun and Billy dirtied her hands with this too, and he was sorry. He didn’t tell her that because it didn’t matter, like it didn’t matter that Harrington had lied to him. There was nothing he could ever say that would matter.

She felt guilty and she was growing cold, and neither would ever feel clean again. She took a breath, kept her hands in her pockets.

“Mike is right,” She said with eyes that said the unspoken, _if you had died than he’d be here right now._ They didn’t waver when she leaned in closer to him, _you should have died,_ trailing her cold fingers down his wrist to his hand.

She didn’t look away and he allowed her to uncurl his hand from its fist. He let her touch softly over the black of his fingernails and the raise of his scars, and then weight down her touch with cool metal pressed against his palm.

Her eyes didn’t waver as she curled his fingers around the handle of a revolver. She didn’t blink or look guilty, or be anything other than _sure_ of that he should do with it. She slid his hand back into his pocket and stepped back, “Mike is right. You shouldn’t be here.”

She didn’t say, _you don’t deserve to be here._

She didn’t say, _I can’t stand to look at you._

She didn’t say, _kill yourself._

She didn’t say another word because she didn’t have to. He knew what she meant. He knew the weight of what she meant, and he knew that she was right.

He’d over spent his time on this earth and the result was that Steve was dead. He was supposed to die when that rat bit him. He was supposed to die in that fucking ice cream shot at the Starcourt Mall.

For the briefest of seconds, everything poured into him and threatened to burst him. It was oceanic salt to his wounds and rubbing alcohol in his veins. It was gunpowder and the weight of the guitar case as he sat it at the foot of Steve’s bed. It was the sweet, sweet smile and the grateful _thank you_ , and the way that Harrington had pressed a kiss to his temple and told him that he was going to take a nap.

It was the stairs and the framed picture at the bottom of Steve with his diploma. It was hearing the ring of a gun discharge so close and the way that his knees buckled under him. It was Mrs. Harrington’s scream and the hurt, and the way that it tasted like blood, and vile, and funeral dirt.

He bit down hard on his lip and forced back the threat of tears in his eyes. He nodded his head, “Thank you.”

She said nothing.

It was a closed casket.

Harrington’s face had been gaunt and hollowed-cheeked and pale when he was allowed to go home. He was eaten up with the infection and bruised from the drawn blood, and his hair was an unruly beast that couldn’t be tamed. His eyes were unnaturally light, but he was still breathtaking. Still pretty. Perfect.

He was a pretty boy. He was a pretty face. It felt like one last injustice to him that he didn’t even have that.

Harrington was buried next to his grandparents. He was buried in front of every person in town, in front of weeping girls and teary-eyed guys, and his mother collapsing in her husband’s arms, _begging_ for none of this to be true.

The funeral was a quick thing and the body was laid to rest in the ground, and Billy didn’t think that anybody found closure. There was a party in town to drink your sorrows, where everybody was going to pretend that they didn’t spend half of last year talking shit about Harrington.

He had been invited, but he wasn’t going.

Max didn’t tell him that she was leaving, but she was gone when he looked for her. The Harringtons were gone and Nancy sobbed in Jonathan’s shoulder, and then they were gone too.

It was just him and the headstone, and the weight of a gun in his pocket. It was him, knelt into the dirt with it beneath his fingernails.

He traced the letters on the headstone.

It felt too small for Steve Harrington, for the – the fucking _hero_ that saved Hawkins, saved the world, saved him. He was saved, and Harrington killed himself for it. He was saved, and he shouldn’t have been.

It should have been his headstone, his funeral.

It should have been Neil, Susan, and Maxine all pretending that it was some big loss to lose him. It shouldn’t be this.

He dug his fingernails into the stone until it scraped them bloody, and then he took out the revolver. He looked at it and then at the stone, and he spoke to Harrington, wherever he was now, “You idiot.”

He was startled by the response, “He was never an idiot.”

It took Billy a second to realize that the voice was coming from the other side of the headstone and then to pick his feet up to look. He found the kid – the one with the hat, the one that Harrington loved, _Dustin_ – sitting with his back to the grave.

His knees were drawn to his chest and his head tucked down, looking as small as he possibly could. His voice was wet, but his eyes were solid, sure, “Take it back.”

“I take it back,” Billy grunted, falling back against the stone next to the kid. “He was the stupidest fucking _idiot_ that has ever lived in the _universe_ and he deserves this.”

Billy didn’t even believe that but he rolled through it, “He deserves to be dead because he should have fucking left me-“

“Steve wasn’t book smart, or street smart, or – or good at coming up with plans but he was _people_ smart,” Dustin defended, glaring at him with nothing tangible behind it. He was too sad to be angry and Billy was too empty to be human. “That’s not _nothing_. It means something and he – he saw something in you that he thought was worth saving.”

“Well, he was fucking wrong.”

“We voted not to,” He told him. “Dr. Owen gave us a cure that he thought might work, but it was too much of a risk after you transformed. We took a vote. We voted to let you die.”

Billy knew that.

Before the change had completely taken over and he was _stuck_ in the freezer at Scoops Ahoy, he heard the doctor explain what he was becoming on the phone. He heard the kids on the other side of the door talking to Ms. Byers and the cop, and Nancy fucking Wheeler, and they all took a vote.

Steve wasn’t the only one that voted against leaving him there, but he was the only one that had tried to save him even after he’d turned completely. After he ripped the door off its hinges and bit the heads of government soldiers, after he ate their guts. He had been the only one willing to risk saving him.

“I voted to leave you to die,” Dustin said bluntly, standing up and wiping the dirt off his shorts. He paused and stared at Billy, mouth falling open.

Billy realized belatedly that he still had the gun in his hand, resting against his knee forgotten. There was no point in trying to hide it, “Kid-“

“Steve saw something in you that made him turn around and go back,” He said in a rush. “We didn’t listen to him, so he saved you alone. He got _hurt_ saving you.”

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Billy told him, and he fucking meant it. It was the stupidest thing he’s ever seen anybody do. “And now he’s dead.”

“Steve was going to teach me how to drive this summer and how to change a tire,” He breathed out like a balloon deflating. He said it in the say way that you’d say, _Steve didn’t leave a note_ or _Steve said that at least he wasn’t losing his hair._ It hurt, “He wasn’t known for his good ideas, obviously, but he was my – he was my _best_ friend.”

Billy doesn’t know why he offered, “I could teach you.”

“I don’t want that,” Dustin spat back. There was nothing mean to it, a reflective nature to a wound that was too new to touch. He swallowed down that sick that came with sobbing so much that there was nothing left to give, that came with the realization that things were wrong and couldn’t be fixed.

Death had a way of clawing up your mouth until all you could taste was blood. Dustin swallowed again, “You’re alive and he’s not. You don’t get to take that from him.”

“I-“

“One of Steve’s last actions on this earth was to make sure that you were saved because he saw something inside of you that was special, and I don’t understand it. I don’t see it,” He admitted. “But I trust Steve. He saved my life too, and Max’s. He helped me when there was no one else and I – I understand what he did, why he did it.”

“He told me about his grandpa dying of cancer and how it was really hard on everybody, and this isn’t better but – but how would he know?” Dustin continued. “But – but you can’t take your life because he saved you. It would make all of this so – so pointless. You were worth saving and it wasn’t just so you could kill yourself.”

Something in Billy _cracked_ , and he can’t stop the tidal wave of tears that burst through his forced indifference. He felt so fucking _hollow_. He felt like a fraud in his skin and he doesn’t deserve any of this. He didn’t deserve Harrington and now he didn’t even have him.

He wasn’t even his _friend_ and Steve –

“What would Har- What would Steve do?” Billy asked, pleaded, begged for an answer. He needed to know. “How would he move on from this?”

Dustin smiled the way that no child should ever know how to smile. He smiled like everything would be okay when they both knew that it never would. He smiled like the world wasn’t ending, like Harrington wasn’t dead, like any of them could move on from this.

“Steve would get rid of this gun first,” He said, so they buried it in the dirt with the casket. “And probably like, adopt a bunch of asshole teenagers.”

Billy choked on a harsh laugh, “I’m not doing that.”

“I know,” Dustin squeezed Billy’s hand and hugged him like no one has since that night. “I don’t think anybody knows what to do in a situation like this, but Steve would tell me to just get through it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to think of something worth writing since I finished up Boys Keep Swinging and for some reason I thought, well, that wasn't sad enough. 
> 
> It's apparently going to be a common theme in my writing that Steve's going to make Billy an accomplice to his suicide attempt. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
